Novartis to spend $23B on US manufacturing and R&D sites, including 7 new facilities
Swiss-based medicines company Novartis announced that it will invest $23 billion over five years on 10 U.S. manufacturing and R&D sites — including seven new facilities — with production capacity for active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and biologics drug substances, as well as secondary production and packaging.
Six of the new facilities will be manufacturing plants. Novartis plans to build two new radioligand therapy (RLT) manufacturing facilities in undisclosed locations in Florida and Texas. Of the four sites in soon-to-be-determined states, three facilities will produce biologics drug substances, drug products, device assembly and packaging, and one facility will make chemical drug substances, oral solids dosage forms, and packaging.
The investment, which will create almost 1,000 new jobs at Novartis and approximately 4,000 additional U.S. jobs, includes the expansion of the company’s three existing RLT manufacturing facilities in Carlsbad, California, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Millburn, New Jersey.
“With these investments, Novartis will have manufacturing capacity in the U.S. for all its core technology platforms, including small molecules and biologics,” according to the company. “With new manufacturing capacity, Novartis will be able to produce 100% of its key medicines end-to-end in the U.S., a significant increase from current levels.”
On the drug discovery side, the company’s investment includes a new $1.1 billion biomedical research innovation hub in San Diego, California — Novartis’ second global R&D hub in the U.S. — which will complement existing hubs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Basel, Switzerland.
“As a Swiss-based company with a significant presence in the U.S., these investments will enable us to fully bring our supply chain and key technology platforms into the U.S. to support our strong U.S. growth outlook,” Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said in a statement, noting America’s “pro-innovation policy and regulatory environment.”
Novartis’ announcement comes on the heels of President Donald Trump’s renewed threat this week of imposing tariffs on pharmaceuticals meant to bring drug manufacturing back to the U.S. With his tariffs on pharmaceuticals, Trump said on Tuesday that drug manufacturers “will come rushing back into our country because we’re the big market.”
Novartis follows major U.S. manufacturing investment announcements from large pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson’s plans to spend more than $55 billion and Eli Lilly’s planned $27 billion capital expenditure on new infrastructure.